Wikipedia-haters & The Whereabouts of El Debarge.

"I wonder what El Debarge is up to these days," said Ryan, seemingly from nowhere.

I looked up from the knee-high socks that I was rolling into place and scanned his face for some clue as to what exactly he was talking about. I was in the costume shop of the theater, getting dressed for that nights' performance of "Vaudeville & Vixens". At the time that Ryan walked up, I had on a white t-shirt, comedy underpants, sock garters and one black sock. I was mid-sock, when Ryan hit me with his El Debarge question.

"Um, what?" I asked, genuinely confused.

"You know, El Debarge, the singer. I wonder what he's up to?"

"The guy who sang, 'Who's Johnny?' That guy?" I stopped rolling up my socks and looked at Ryan, thinking that this would all clear itself up, if I waited long enough.
Ryan was a sweet kid. Maybe a little young, but he had a great attitude and was a lot of fun to work with, in the show. Before this very moment, he had never talked about El Debarge, or any other musician, with me.

"Yeah. That's the one. I wonder what he's up to," Ryan looked at me as if this was the most natural conversation in the world.

"I don't know. Why? Why are you wondering what El Debarge is up to?" I could tell that we were getting to the heart of things now.

"Well, Ryan and I were talking about him and how he had a big hit with that song and "Rhythm of the Night". And how we never really heard from him again. And I wonder why that is."

Now that the mystery was solved for me, I went back to rolling up my sock.

"Well, you could look him up on the wikipedia and see what he's up to," I said.

And Ryan actually snickered sarcastically and said, "Yeah! Wikipedia! I trust THAT website. Ha ha!" and he laughed snarkily about his clear dislike for Wikipedia.

And that's what this blog entry is about. Ryan's snapshot disdain for Wikipedia. And how I thought we were all past that whole idea. It reminds me of the anti-internet predjudice of the late 80's and early 90'. When you could hear someone say, with a straight face, "There's nothing but kooks on the internet" and you couldn't site an internet page as a reference in a school report without risking your teacher's stern disapproval. I remember when we had to learn how to cite internet pages in the bibliography sections of our reports. New technology required new citation rules.

But it's decades after that. And the wikipedia has been in operation since 2001. Seven years to shake off the jangly first days of kook infiltration. The wikipedia now has a ast community of researchers and writers. They police themselves endlessly. Both for factual innacuracies and for format inconsistencies. Their single greatest asset is their reputation for validity and they protect it with multiple layers of security measures.

Even Stephen Colbert's personal onslaught against the Wikipedia page on elephants has been rebuked, time and time again. Some Colbert Nation fan posts the phrase "Elephant population in Africa has tripled over the past six months" per his suggestion on Wikipedia and the wikiadministrators take it down. If the Colbert poster keeps trying to post it, they lock the article and ban his acct. Cyber a-holes are efficiently dispatched in the wiki-universe.

All of this editing and policing site has a very real benefit - the wikipedia is now, unquestioningly, a good source for information. It isn't comprehensive. It isn't the final authority. But it generally knows what it's talking about. And can give you a good foundation of information if you want to know about a subject. And it frequently can point you in the right direction to seek out more information about a given subject, if you want to pursue your studies.

We're lucky to live in an age that makes information to readily available to the citizens. The wikipedia is free to all users. It's accesible to anyone with internet access. And in it's 7 short years of existence, it has evidenced a permanence and adaptability that will ensure it's longevity. Our kids will use wikipedia. (Or some derivation thereof.)

When Ryan sneered at the suggestion of using wikipedia, he accidentally tipped his hat about his own ignorance. By which I don't mean an inability to learn, but an anachronism in his way of thinking. He was stuck in the late 80's mindset of "that dang ole' internets is run by and for kooks" instead of the more operative mindset of "generally speaking, the internet, specifically wikipedia, can be a good source of information".

I finished rolling up my socks and said, "Well, maybe the wikipedia isn't a good source for hotly contested discussions, like religion versus science or civil rights and maybe there's a temptation to use the wikipedia to spread misinformation, ala the presidential elections, but I bet you could trust it for information and the activities of El Debarge. I doubt anyone is spamming his wiki page to spread misinformation. In fact, I bet El Debarge is thrilled to have a wikipedia page at all."

Ryan grudgingly agreed that he wasn't in any danger of El Debarge mis-information. He turned to the mac computer and chose, instead, to go to Youtube and watch the video for El Debarge's hit song, "Who's Johnny", which featured scenes from the 1986 movie, Short Circuit.



You can read the wikipedia page for El Debarge here. Everyone here at "word" would like to wish him success on his new, untitled, sixth album and for the selection of his 1985 hit, "Rhythm of the Night" as the theme song of Lowes Motor Speedway during the 2008 NASCAR season.

Cheers,
Mr.B


Mr.Debarge in 2007